Rhode Island Considering Solar For All New Construction and Parking Lots (pv-magazine-usa.com) 103
Rhode Island representative Jennifer Boylan has submitted legislation that would mandate the inclusion of solar power in all newly constructed single-family dwellings, multi-family dwellings, large commercial buildings, and parking lots exceeding 16,000 sq. ft. From a report: The legislation, titled the Solar Neighborhoods Act (PDF), calls for the Rhode Island Building Code Commission to establish new code requirements for each of the aforementioned construction types. The document specifies that, at a minimum, the Code Commission must add code provisions to address:
- Static load roof strength, requiring that roofs where solar equipment could be placed support a minimum of six pounds per square foot;
- Placement of non-solar-related rooftop equipment, considering positioning that avoids shading solar equipment and maximizes continuous roof space;
- Sizing and provision of extra electrical panels to accommodate the addition of an appropriately-sized future solar energy system; and
- Provision of space for a solar energy system DC-AC inverter in the utility room or on an outside wall.
The legislation also recommends that the Code Commission consider amending the building code to account for roof orientation and angle, roofing materials that minimize or require no roof penetrations, conduit for wiring from roof to electrical panels, and the inclusion of level 2 electric vehicle charging infrastructure. [...] The legislation further requires outdoor parking lots larger than 16,000 sq. ft to install raised solar-panel canopies covering at least 50% of the parking lot's surface, and that 5% of the parking spaces must feature electric vehicle charging stations. Moreover, 20% of parking spaces should be equipped with the infrastructure, such as underground wiring, to accommodate additional EV charging stations in the future. The report notes that California has already implemented a new construction solar mandate, and a similar measure is under consideration in Massachusetts.
- Static load roof strength, requiring that roofs where solar equipment could be placed support a minimum of six pounds per square foot;
- Placement of non-solar-related rooftop equipment, considering positioning that avoids shading solar equipment and maximizes continuous roof space;
- Sizing and provision of extra electrical panels to accommodate the addition of an appropriately-sized future solar energy system; and
- Provision of space for a solar energy system DC-AC inverter in the utility room or on an outside wall.
The legislation also recommends that the Code Commission consider amending the building code to account for roof orientation and angle, roofing materials that minimize or require no roof penetrations, conduit for wiring from roof to electrical panels, and the inclusion of level 2 electric vehicle charging infrastructure. [...] The legislation further requires outdoor parking lots larger than 16,000 sq. ft to install raised solar-panel canopies covering at least 50% of the parking lot's surface, and that 5% of the parking spaces must feature electric vehicle charging stations. Moreover, 20% of parking spaces should be equipped with the infrastructure, such as underground wiring, to accommodate additional EV charging stations in the future. The report notes that California has already implemented a new construction solar mandate, and a similar measure is under consideration in Massachusetts.
You had me until parking lot (Score:1, Troll)
I'm all for solar power and using it, don't get me wrong. It's a neat technology, I'm about to put some on my own roof (if only because our country subsidizes these things like mad now), but parking lots? I can see parking garages where they put up a house anyway, so there will be a roof anyway, so putting some solar panels on it ain't a big deal, but let's ponder for a moment what this means for shopping malls and the like. They are already reluctant to "waste" real estate on parking lots. I don't know abo
Re:You had me until parking lot (Score:4, Informative)
I've heard of lots of problems with chargers, but I've not heard of vandalism being a significant issue. I think you're being creative in finding reasons to think this won't work. But -- the solar will produce a lot of power. That power can then be used or sold by the parking lot owner. Eg they can sell it to EV owners (and if the parking lot owners also own the destination, eg a mall, they can install the right level of charger to optimise dwell times, too); or other eg, they can use it to cut their own electricity bills. So there are financial incentives that can make this work, once the mandate is in place.
Re:You had me until parking lot (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and additionally: covered lots are much nicer for drivers and passengers. The cars aren't so hot in summer (and this cuts energy use, too), and you get some protection from rain and snow.
Re:You had me until parking lot (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, let's be honest.
RI does subsidize, as do many forward-thinking states. So does the Federal Government. That's because green energy is a good idea. Compared to the amount of indirect subsidies that the US has invested protecting oil supplies over the decades those subsidies are but a drop in the ocean.
Even if ROI were 15 years, so what? When compared to other costs associated with building a large mall, and the expected ROI, that's probably less anyway.
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You think *Rome* doesn't get enough insolation to defray CO2 construction costs. This does not sound like someone who is familiar with Rome...
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I'm in Oregon, about 40 miles north of the 45th parallel. You may have heard that we get a bit of rain in Oregon, and I live at elevation so we also get snow and ice. I put solar on my roof last year, getting permission-to-operate from my utility provider in late September.
For the first full month of production - October (not exactly the maximal solar exposure time, while use of heat and artificial light were increasing day-to-day) we offset our electrical usage by 52%. And we had to install less capacit
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For the first full month of production - October (not exactly the maximal solar exposure time, while use of heat and artificial light were increasing day-to-day) we offset our electrical usage by 52%. And we had to install less capacity than I wanted to (it's a 9.2 kW system) because of some really stupid local ordinances about having X distance between literally ANYTHING on the roof and the panels - meaning pluming vent pipes, attic vents, etc.
I'm anticipating ~70% offset across a whole year of production due to favorable net metering regulations in Oregon - I'll produce more power than we use in a couple weeks, and start building up a credit with my utility provider which I can then draw down over the fall and winter.
Right this moment, I'm already producing 2x what we're pulling from the grid for our current energy use, and it's only 9:30a on April 5 with both myself and my wife working from home, and it's 40F outside so the heat pump is running.
I would agree with you if only in real life utilities were giant free batteries that you just charge up when convenient and later drew from whenever you wanted. In that case solar would be amazing and given the ease at which one even in northern climates can produce far more electricity than they could ever use in a years time it would be a no-brainer.
The reality is unfortunately utilities are not batteries and your experience only works because too many people are not doing the same as you. If they did y
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That's a great point, except for being completely invalidated by my grid operator offering incentives to people to install solar power because they want to buy the excess energy produced by the panels, reducing how much energy they need to buy from other sources at sometimes ridiculous point-in-time prices or spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build and operate generation capacity themselves. They get to buy the energy cheaper from me and others like me, and don't have to outlay the capital to build
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That's a great point, except for being completely invalidated by my grid operator offering incentives to people to install solar power because they want to buy the excess energy produced by the panels, reducing how much energy they need to buy from other sources at sometimes ridiculous point-in-time prices or spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build and operate generation capacity themselves.
Your statement is orthogonal to the one I made. I'm glad it's working for you yet it simply doesn't scale.
And at some point in the future if what you say comes to pass, there's always the ability to install a big ass battery in my garage, which works perfectly well as a battery, as it is one.
ESS doubles both cost and environmental impact while remaining unable to address seasonal variation or bad weather. The best realistic outcome of ESS with present day technology is limited to buffering daily variation.
There is no technology currently available that makes storage cost effective. This is why I support investing in utility scale wind over PV and especially residential PV which carries a
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No that's definitely on the high side of the expected return on investment timeframe. [fnrpusa.com]
And that's for investors, most developers get an immediate return on investment by selling as soon as they can.
So the real question would be, can they raise the sale price enough to cover the costs of the solar installation? Probably not, but I don't have any good rea
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So the real question would be, can they raise the sale price enough to cover the costs of the solar installation?
When every other development in the state is bound by the same requirements, then yes. You could ask the same question about any other code-required technology that gets introduced. What's the ROI on sprinkler systems? Adequate fire exits? ADA accessibility? (ramps, doors, elevators, etc.), Customer bathrooms?
They manage to cover those costs. No reason for solar to be any different.
Re:You had me until parking lot (Score:4, Interesting)
I would not count on it being shady below, it's more likely to be really hot there.
I mean, the aim of solar panels is to make electricity from light. If they aren't blocking the light then they aren't doing their job and making the money their owners want them to. I would count on the shade from the solar panels being pretty effective at providing shade, in fact one easily solved worry might be the opposite - lack of light in the evening. Even if, say, 20% of light is getting through, that massively reduces the heating inside a car.
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Why would largely horizontal panels stop wind? The PV panels kind of have to be pointed at the sun, and if it's a parking lot we're talking about, they would need to be at least 12 feet off the ground so vans can fit under them. You ever had a picnic in a public park under a roof structure that doesn't have walls? Paper plates and napkins still get blown off the table when a breeze comes along, and the bottom of that roof structure probably isn't as tall.
Plus, photovoltaic panels by definition would be c
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Why would largely horizontal panels stop wind?
The PV panels kind of have to be pointed at the sun, and if it's a parking lot we're talking about, they would need to be at least 12 feet off the ground so vans can fit under them.
In northern latitudes you need a steeper angle for optimal collection. If you had vertically positioned panels on the side of a building you would get reasonable amount of energy out of that while getting nil from horizontally positioned panels. The opposite is true closer to the equator where vertically positioned panels would be almost worthless.
One has to check with local jurisdiction for wind loading requirements which add cost to the structure. Along eastern seaboard requirements tend to be quite hig
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I do think these problems can be mitigated with proper density/design yet they are certainly valid considerations. You sure as heck wouldn't build a flat canopy that fully covered the entire lot.
If anyone thought that such a simple design would be worth the money spent on it, then they deserve what they get. It's a trivial design decision to have every other row of supports be a bit taller in order to achieve both a more optimal facing angle, and better runoff drainage for precipitation.
Literally nobody ever suggested a purely horizontal roof for solar. Note that I said "largely horizontal" implying that there would be some pitch angle for drainage and PV optimization.
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Instead of writing all this, you could look and see what solar shades over car parks actually look like. You could even look at some in northern latitudes too
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Also, concerning shade, yes, that would be nice, if that's what this would get you. What it will more likely result in is a token steel frame that keeps those panels up
Don't be thick, there's no need for that [google.com]
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There are lots of challenges associated with getting solar canopies in car parks built out, but they don't include long ROIs, because the ROIs just aren't that long. A much bigger challenge is split incentives between the various commercial parties. This isn't specific to solar, it's true of all sustainability projects for commercial real estate, where landlord and leaseholders often have wildly different interests. A landlord may have a typical ownership period of say three to five years only, and energy s
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Mandates are often necessary for things that drive up initial costs even if they make long-term financial sense. It's just too easy to think short-term.
This can't be the reason because there are no shortage of solar leasing companies that handle all the work/contracting and front all costs.
Those who would install solar if only they had the money up front do have options available to them.
The financial incentives are pretty good not to use your hair dryer in the bath tub, but new construction still has to have GFCIs for all outlets near water!
Conflating safety requirements with financial incentives is quite a leap.
I think the underlying investment argument is fundamentally flawed since it considers long term investments in the context of today rather than the context of the future. As we have seen with environ
Re: You had me until parking lot (Score:2)
You can easily argue that converting to solar or other non-fossil fuel is a safety requirement. The failure is conflating "safety" with thinking it has a specific human it saved, unlike a gfci which can specify which human it saved. Even car safety can't determine "this human was saved due to reflective paint on the streets", but stats will show it, just like they'll show financial and life savings when we can get the climate under control.
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You can easily argue that converting to solar or other non-fossil fuel is a safety requirement.
Anyone can easily argue anything they please. What matters is the validity of the statement not the ability to argue.
The failure is conflating "safety" with thinking it has a specific human it saved, unlike a gfci which can specify which human it saved.
GFCIs are not keyed to individuals. They trip when there is more than a 5ma imbalance. Who or what causes that to happen is irrelevant.
Even car safety can't determine "this human was saved due to reflective paint on the streets", but stats will show it, just like they'll show financial and life savings when we can get the climate under control.
Very little exists that can't be justified by someone somewhere on the grounds of "safety".
For example it is well established rooftop PV is twice the cost of utility PV. It is also well known PV carries substantially higher environmental costs while offeri
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I never said they were. You can easily scroll up instead of me pointing out your strawman, so I won't repeat myself. A GFCI can specify which human it saved. When it trips, somebody did something to cause it. This is very much unlike when someone doesn't go off the road in the rain due to striping highways, because such things are not known except through statistics.
Similarly, lowering fossil use statistically saves lives. Many lives, in fact, and will save many more in th
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If the value of produced energy gets that low, the entire market will change. Especially if battery prices drop as well.
I agree the market will change but not in a good way. The inability to recoup capital costs of production will create perverse incentives for cheapest dirty hydrocarbon sources and the market will force ESS in excess of what otherwise have been necessary resulting in unnecessary environmental harm and increased energy costs compared to executing on a properly planned system.
At that point, local generation and storage will make more sense than a grid.
This is a long tail problem. It's easy to cover a majority of demand yet another matter entirely to address all of it. There is no s
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Mandates are often necessary for things that drive up initial costs even if they make long-term financial sense. It's just too easy to think short-term.
Yeah, but buying a house is a different decision from buying a phone. It's a big enough purchase people will run the numbers and trade off long term gain versus short term cost. At least I trust people to be adults about it and if they don't, it's not my place to adult for them.
Thing is, it's all about expectation about the future. I'm on my second house and in both cases, I was just barely able to make the payments. I was absolutely looking for any way I could to reduce cost now, regardless of whether ther
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GFCI outlets are not visible in new construction. The GFCIs are (mostly) in the breaker box not at the individual outlets. The likely reason that GFCIs are mandated is that people *can't* tell and the mandate allows the building inspector to check for them as the construction proceeds.
Are they? How 'bout that. All the GFCIs I've seen have the reset switch in the outlet. Be that as it may, I think it's quite easy for a homeowner to open the subpanel and look. It's also very easy to verify with a $5 tester from the Depot. Not that I expect most homeowners to do this but they easily could or ask someone to do it.
What I was getting at was practices which are difficult to verify, such as whether drain pipes are properly vented and have the correct slope. That's typically hidden in the walls a
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Vandalism is a potential threat for all solar installations, and I'm sure that there is insurance that can be taken out against it.
That being the case, there is no higher risk of vandalism to parking-lot solar installations than there is risk to solar-over-dirt solar installations.
It's actually a bonus. "We have shaded parking in our mall!" is a good advertising line. No one likes getting into a scorching-hot car.
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More than that, the power generated by the solar in the parking lot can dramatically lower the costs of operating the mall, especially if you are also installing EV chargers.
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The OP mentioned vandalism against EV chargers, not solar. That seems more credible, not least bc it doesn't risk the vandal's neck, but my comment was that while vandalism may be a *theoretical* risk, in practice I've not heard of EV chargers being vandalised, at least here in the UK. Chargers are sometimes out of service for all sorts of reasons, but I've not heard of vandalism being one of them
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How many parking lot owners will just say "screw this" and parking spaces become mighty scarce when parking lots close down?
Then we legislate that there has to be X number of parkingspots provided for business Y. This is nothing new BTW. France is legislating this for parking lots of 80 spaces and up: https://cleantechnica.com/2023... [cleantechnica.com] In more sunny regions this is already starting to be the norm anyway. Covered parking is a lot more prevalent so why not put solar panels on it?
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If you have covered parking, that's great and it will work quite well there, like I said, if there's already a roof, why not slap some panels on it? But that's something that I've seen more in Europe, less so in the US. In the US, real estate in the outskirts where the malls tend to be is apparently not as expensive as it is in the far more cramped Europe, so you have those acres and acres of concrete in front of those megamalls. None of that is covered by any roofs.
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But something like this: https://www.google.nl/maps/@49... [google.nl] , a quick count makes me think there are at least 1,000 parking spots there.
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Here's a comparable mall in Vero Beach, FL, that's relatively small by U.S. standards at 4,200 spaces: Indian River Mall [google.nl] If they could start getting solar over those kinds of areas, it'd be great. Unfortunately, U.S. businesses being what they hare, the property owners will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into making those kinds of improvements. Disney World would be another prime place, with 10,000 spaces at the Magic Kingdom and 11,000+ at Epcot.
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Another winner: the acres of long-term parking lots surrounding every airport that isn't right in the middle of a city. Nothing but wide open space for absorbing sunlight, because anything tall that could possibly cast shade has been eliminated already.
Re:You had me until parking lot (Score:4, Insightful)
Fewer parking lots would be a great thing if, and only if, you first give people a way to get around without a car. Now, I haven't been to RI yet, but as someone used to European public transport, I'm kinda appalled by what the US has to offer in general. Look, if people need to drive about in a bus for an hour to get their shopping done, or if they can drive there in 10 minutes in their own car, what do you think they'll do?
If you just remove the parking spaces, you will not get fewer people using their cars. You will get more people driving around searching for a place to put their car.
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My home town built kick-ass public transport, and only when they noticed that the parking lots were empty, they started to wonder what the hell to do with those places. It wasn't even the intention to get rid of the parking lots, it was more that they wanted to reduce the traffic. But when they did, people noticed that they don't only get around faster, it was also cheaper, and a lot of people just simply sold their car because they had no use for it anymore, and renting one for the two times a year they ne
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If you just remove the parking spaces, you will not get fewer people using their cars. You will get more people driving around searching for a place to put their car.
You'll also get a lot fewer people willing to patronize those businesses. Europe had kind of a mixed blessing with limited land area, in that it forced more efficient use of it. In the U.S., there's so much land that people just don't care. Same is true of low fuel/electricity prices - anytime a resource has easy availability and trivial co
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In Europe, more to the point, in my home town, I can actually go shopping and for groceries without a car. Every 100 meters or so, you'll have a decent groceries store, and a subway station away there's whatever shop you want. What the planners here did was basically to dedicated the ground floor of all buildings in the city to some sort of business and build the residential apartments on top of them, so no matter where you are, you're living above a groceries store, a clothing shop or some other kind of bu
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If you just remove the parking spaces, you will not get fewer people using their cars. You will get more people driving around searching for a place to put their car.
Facts.
The City of Portland stopped mandating parking-spaces-per-whatever, or at least significantly reduced it for "mixed-use development" (developer-speak for retail on first floor, condos on floor 2+), so developers started buying up single-family homes, merging adjacent properties together, bulldozing the existing homes on them and building zero-sidewalk-offset condo bunkers with on-street parking. And every single neighborhood they've done this in now has cars lining the streets in every spare inch of
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That's like saying if a restaurant removes tables and chairs, they will not get fewer customers, they will get longer lines waiting for a table!
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However, it's also pretty clear that there is something wrong with these numbers. Disney World recently cleared a few acres of trees to put in solar panels even though it wou
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It would be great if asphalt reflected heat, but it absorbs it.
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Re: Disney;
My guess is that they were able to sell the timber on land they already owned to offset construction cost, and the cost of retrofitting the parking lot with a structure from a diminished capacity point of view during the build (say you lose 20% of the parking lot for several weeks while installation is happening) made it a problem. Plus, they aren't exactly short on land - there's still thousands of acres that they own that are undeveloped. Some of it needs to remain as wetlands due to environm
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Covered parking is a lot more prevalent so why not put solar panels on it?
This isn't as silly as the "build solar panels into roads" proposal, but you can make many of the same arguments against it.
It's more cost effective to build a few big solar farms than to install a few solar panels in dozens/hundreds of parking lots across the state. You get economies of scale. In a solar farm you can also orient the panels optimally, without worrying about the layout of the parking lot or obstructions from nearby buildings/trees.
The only strong argument I can see for putting solar panels
Re:You had me until parking lot (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes a lot of sense actually.
In sane jurisdictions parking space requirements are specified in code to avoid the problems that your batshit crazy state allows, and as a result, parking lots usually have more surface area than the businesses that they serve. Outdoor malls, strip malls, big malls. Huge parking lots.
In addition to generating a lot of distributed green electricity, those panels will prevent the suns energy from heating up tarmac and reduce the heat island effect of suburbia. They will also reduce the amount of energy wasted cooling cars down in the summer. It's win-win-win.
It's going to take some careful design in snow states to ensure that the panels can clear themselves safely to an area that doesn't matter. If done well, that could significantly reduce the amount of plowing needed too. Done badly though and the snow will avalanche off the panels to block parking spaces a few hours after the plows have all left.
Re:You had me until parking lot (Score:4, Interesting)
The goal would be to gain economies of scale.
If you standardize the requirement, everyone starts to design around how to make the solar installation the cheapest, and there's a parallel evolution with manufacturers. It will never get as cheap as grid-scale solar in the countryside just from a power perspective, but you could certainly close the gap. And then you run into the synergies: pair the solar install directly with charger installs at the same time, pair it with roof installs at the same time, pair it with lot paving at the same time, etc, so rather than having to pay for multiple construction/wiring processes, you pay for just one. By combining steps, there's the potential, at least, to get the marginal cost of including solar in the construction cheaper than the cost of building dedicated solar facilities in the countryside (each of which have to have ground preparation, anchoring, road construction, grid connections, etc and only achieve a single purpose).
It'll take a while to reach that point, though.
I do however think people need to take resilience into consideration and value that. Imagine how much better shape, say, Ukraine would be in had everyone had rooftop solar when Russia launched its energy war. Imagine how much better shape California consumers would have been in during its energy crises if they didn't have to rely on (and then curtail) potentially fire-starting long-distance power lines during droughts. Etc. Resilience should be valued.
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Or maybe the cities just don't want to gut themselves like this one did [reddit.com], and some of these. [ou.edu]
So as long as cities force businesses to provide more parking than the free market thinks is reasonable, solar panels to shade it all is nothing but lipstick on a pig.
Re:You had me until parking lot (Score:5, Insightful)
Solar canopies aren't new things. Average costs are about $3.90 as of 2022 per Watt produced. And the reason for giving it that way is that the property owner is free to collect costs from those using the stations. That is, there's a fee to plug into the charger and the canopy owner collects the fee.
As for putting wiring in the ground, that's already a thing as most lots are also illuminated, and most (including Rhode Island) are required by law to have this illumination for lots of a particular size. Again, this isn't some new cost.
For the charging posts and what not. Well that was coming anyway. More charging locations are opening up and the law now provides the consideration of the required installation into building consideration before permitting. Additionally, as the law indicates, this is only new construction build seeking such for permitting. If you want egregious building requirements I can easily think of more so that's serving less in already part of the process before. Good instance is a county near me has required the sidewalk as part of the property permitting process and cost included into the permit. That is the home buyer is paying for the sidewalk but doesn't own the sidewalk. That's not something that's been a prior thing. Usually, you buy it, you own it. So if the requirement for EV stations is egregious for you, you'd likely howl at some of the more esoteric things that city managers have come up with. But I'll give you that, it's a matter of opinion and the critic is valid.
Now onto the vandals destroying charge ports. Well that's likely to fall into property damage and that comes part and parcel with say parking lot lights as well. There's methods for some mitigation but yeah, sometimes people destroy things for no good reason. There is law to account for that. But we don't hire staff for parking lot illumination, I am doubtful that we need such for EV stations. Cameras and insurance seems to handle the issue fine enough.
How many parking lot owners will just say "screw this" and parking spaces become mighty scarce when parking lots close down?
Well as you mentioned.
here they actually had to force shopping malls to include parking spaces because they just built the mall and had people park ... wherever
It is part of the permitting process already in Rhode Island and such is likewise in many other locations. Buildings expecting a particular population of shoppers or visitors are required to have parking lots of particular size. So that's part of the cost of building a brand new shopping mall. And say we take some random place like Market Basket here [goo.gl]. If this was a new build (which it isn't so it does not fall into this law) they are required to:
shall include raised solar-panel canopies covering at least fifty percent (50%) of the surface of the parking lot
That is from part (d) of the new law. Doing a quick polygon shape around the major part of the lot (excluding that random lot towards the entrance) gives ~160,000 sqft, so they need ~80,000 sqft of canopy. That would be for a Trina system around ~$1.2M installed lock, stock, and barrel. Now consider that the average cost of a supermarket is about $77/sqft for the total footprint (and this number can vary a bit consider the actual building being put into place, like Walmart's tend to run a bit higher in cost because they require a bit more complexity to do both a soft lines, hard lines, and grocery store), so again, just a rough polygon around the entire footprint gives us about $34M to build that store. That means the new solar requirement is about 3.5% the cost of the store.
Now do remember that our Market Basket would be able to collect fees on charging. But of course there's maintenance and what not that goes with any of that and the usual deal is that a third party runs the whole thing and give a c
Re:You had me until parking lot (Score:4, Funny)
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Just repeating your number to highlight solar canopies' insignificance in total build cost.
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How many parking lot owners will just say "screw this" and parking spaces become mighty scarce when parking lots close down?
Speaking of "screw this", I believe you lost most everyone at "shopping mall"...
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Moderators please either respect the rules of this site or if you can't do that refrain from moderating. There is no down mod for expressing dislike, disapproval or incorrect statements.
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What a load of FUD.
I've been driving an EV since 2018. You know how many vandalized chargers I've come across? Zero. And that's with two cross-country trips - I've literally driven an EV from the Pacific Ocean in Oregon to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and back (not all at once, so we're not talking about a single point in time).
I think having some kind of "solar roof" over your parking lot may become popular as the solar energy being produced will offset the electric bill the property owner ends up pay
What took it so long? (Score:1)
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it should be illegal to build a house without its own power generation.
Why? Do you argue the same for water treatment, waste disposal, and any other functions that are more efficiently provided centrally?
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> Why? Do you argue the same for water treatment, waste disposal, and any other functions that are more efficiently provided centrally? /Everyone going slower than me on the highway is a moron and everyone going faster than me is a maniac./
People like to judge their position as perfect and from there make pronouncements about others' behavior. /I own this house already so I don't have to do anything, but new homeowners have to jump through all these expensive hurdles./
I'm 4/5 on that self-sufficiency lis
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I basically don't trust the power structure to keep existing because of who's running it, but your point is a good one; economies of scale are covered in the first month of an introductory econ class. I may be able to afford home generation but the people we need to be buying starter homes cannot.
Right. If being self-sufficient buys you peace of mind, knock yer socks off.
I personally want reliable and cheap electricity with a minimum of hassle. I have no problem, blissfully ignoring the evidence to the contrary, in depending on PG&E to provide it for me. I have many, many other things to worry about, power just doesn't make the cut. But that's me, you do you.
One small detail... (Score:3)
Requiring solar, or provisions for solar makes a lot of sense.
Having nothing to do with solar, one detail in TFS kind of leaps off the page: a static load strength of 6 pounds/square foot? In Rhode Island, where they can have heavy snowfall? That's nuts! Get a nice, heavy springtime snow, and you could easily have two to three times that weight. From what I found in a quick internet search, in non-snow country a static load limit of 20 pounds/sq-foot is normal. In snow country, it ought to be higher.
Re: (Score:2)
I interpreted that as 6 lb/sq ft as 6 extra lbs. Otherwise it doesn't make sense. So a 20 lb/ sq ft roof load goes to 26, 40 to 46, etc.
Whether six is the right number I don't know, but the code people and installers do.
How much will this add to construction costs? (Score:3, Informative)
And what about the flow of capital? Are they going to make sure the panels are manufactured in the US or a friendly nation, or is this a massive boon for China?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Canada and the US had many opportunities to be world leaders in the manufacture of solar panels. Thanks to effective lobbying by fossil fuel corporations, they pissed those opportunities away.
Don't talk to me about "flow of capital". When voters consistently support governments that abandon capitalism in favour of crony capitalism, they lose their right to bitch about China owning that market. If you want it back, it's going to cost.
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So now imagine if *every* new build (and I'm assuming substantial remodel) has an extra 30k and indeterminate waiting period attached to it.
I could but I dont think that would be a very realistic thing to imagine. Not only are your regional contractor problems just an anecdote from one small part of the US but massive installations like these are completely different in terms of cost and contractor availability than a single unit home install. RI likely wouldnt even be talking to companies handling small accounts like that.
Re: (Score:2)
I've been trying to find a contractor who will install a backup battery. Despite the manufacturer, the state, and everyone in between offering subsidies and incentives and saying "yes it's valid to have a battery without solar
Unless there is some truly significant disparity between your day and night utility rates, I can't imagine a battery ever achieving ROI without solar. Even with a PV system, batteries can still be a poison pill that completely kills the potential for ROI (again, unless compared against insanely high utility rates).
If you want a lower utility bill, grid tie is the way to go. If you want backup power, get an ICE generator.
Re: (Score:2)
Why are you referring to installing a battery without solar, when this proposal is about installing solar and (as far as I can tell) says nothing about batteries?
Re: This will stop construction in its tracks (Score:2)
Because many solar installs come with batteries, but more to the point because *all* solar installs require inverters.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not seeing the connection. You found it difficult to get a battery installed, so therefore it will also be difficult to get solar panels installed because they both have inverters?
Re: This will stop construction in its tracks (Score:2)
I'm saying that in Massachusetts of all places, getting any solar-related stuff installed is a slog limited by lack of installers. And given that what I wanted has high overlap with what is being mandated, it's going to be trouble.
Plenty of contractors out to install on commercial properties. Fewer willing to do residential installs.
change how we price electricity first (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
$9, what is that during Texas' utility meltdown?
And no, before someone suggests it, you can't use batteries. The amount of energy you would need to store exceeds what you could reasonably store by a factor of nearly 100.
What is the limit of what can reasonably be stored in batteries, and what causes that limit?
and pumped hydro doesn't work either, the maintenance costs kill you
Pumped hydro is in use in utilities today, all around the world. Your position is that you are aware of maintenance costs that all those projects failed to take into account?
https://www.hydropower.org/hyd... [hydropower.org]
Probably not legal (Score:1)
Such an arbitrary requirement would be a gross violation of private property rights. Even if the bill passes, it wouldn't survive any serious legal challenge.
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> Such an arbitrary requirement would be a gross violation of private property rights. Even if the bill passes, it wouldn't survive any serious legal challenge.
Why this one and not dozens of other bullshit code items meant to enrich certain industries and keep The Poors out of home ownership?
Re: (Score:2)
Why this one and not dozens of other bullshit code items meant to enrich certain industries and keep The Poors out of home ownership?
Yes, that ship sailed a long time ago when we passed the first zoning and building codes. To paraphrase the old joke, we know what the law is, now we're just negotiating the price.
To be generous, I'll assume the representative has her heart in the right place and genuinely wants to help the environment. She may be in the pocket of Big Solar Panel Installers too, that wouldn't surprise me. I doubt she's given much thought to how this affects the housing availability and affordability crises. It's just a wafe
Re: (Score:2)
Most of those bullshit code items are related to "public safety" (or actual public safety), or something similar. For example, if you live in some very cold places, it's a local/state requirement that you have proper home heating before you live somewhere. The reasons for that should be obvious: they don't want people dying in the winter. Most code compliance stuff (not counting stupid HSA regulations which are their own monstrosity) is related to you not killing yourself or you not threatening adjacent
Parking lot farming and rainwater catchment (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no economic or environmental reason to do these things. The cost of piecemeal PV installs is 2x that of utility PV. Why do x when you can direct the same resources to providing better outcomes at far less cost and with substantially lower environmental impact?
If the government really cared about the environment and wanted to do something productive they would pursuit wind farms not demanding piecemeal PV.
From a political perspective I disapprove of forcing people to do these things if they don't want to do them. Neither do I support the concept of shifting of responsibility for funding power generation from utilities to random individuals.
Re: (Score:2)
hehehe
But in America we don't want the government to do anything. We find it much better for private businesses to provide such services, this is why we basically privatized our prison system and why there's a push to privatize our school systems. With the smart ass comment out of the way.
There is an argument to be made for a more distributed micro-grid approach. By requiring new construction (home and businesses) to install solar and batteries and be grid tied but making the public utilities responsible fo
Re: (Score:3)
There is an argument to be made for a more distributed micro-grid approach. By requiring new construction (home and businesses) to install solar and batteries and be grid tied but making the public utilities responsible for code enforcement, grid interconnects, and routing electricity from low demand areas to high demand areas.
Yes, that's the argument. Could be right but color me skeptical. I'd prefer we duked this out in the marketplace rather than using subsidies or code to tilt the decision one way or the other. I trust markets much much more than politics to sort out what's most cost effective.
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Retrofitting something to have solar panels costs a lot more than installing solar panels as part of the design. With the rate at which solar panel prices are dropping, installation might become the major portion of the cost.
That doesn't make it right for government to do this as a mandate, they could have done it as an incentives program. Eg a loan that gets repaid from the energy from the panels, and becomes a grant if the panels are a net negative.
Solar is not good for all houses (Score:1)
So let me start by saying.. I am a big fan of solar.. I put them on my house, but I don't think they should go on every house. My houses backyard faces almost due south and was big and flat. Also I did not not have to worry about shade in my case, because it was a new neighborhood and there was no large trees.
I would say that panels should be put on all house where feasible, where the ROI would make sense.
Not accurate and not the best plan (Score:3)
Being a California resident, I don't think Representative Boylan is entirely accurate. My understanding is new construction can either include panels or include a share of a solar farm built elsewhere. That lets residents of Eureka (foggy 25/8) to buy part of a panel farm in the Mojave.
And if RI went that route, I see no need to require the solar farm be in Rhode Island. Go ahead, finance a farm in Arizona. For that matter, buy a share of a wind farm in the Atlantic. Those both help the environment and are probably more cost-effective than rooftop solar. Unless, of course, this is about pandering to solar panel installers and not about reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but I digress.
Of course, it would be much simpler to just tax everyone and subsidize solar or wind farms. Wouldn't that be more fair than putting the the burden on new home buyers? Alternatively, if the Representative wanted to do something productive, perhaps limit the ability of zoning, building codes, and environmental review to block solar/wind installations?
Another costly boondoggle (Score:3)
Lots of sun? (Score:2)
Does RI even get a lot of sun like down south?